Scripture reveals that there will be a day on which God will judge angels and all mankind through His Son, Jesus Christ. When Christ comes again in glory, He will bring about the resurrection of the just and the unjust. The final judgment will occur immediately after the resurrection. Judgment day will be a day of both salvation and judgment. It is commonly referred to in the Old Testament as “the day of the Lord” (Isa. 13:9; Ezek. 30:3). Believers have already passed through judgment based on the sinless life, atoning death, and resurrection of Christ. On judgment day, God will condemn unbelievers to eternal perdition, based on their own sinful thoughts, words, and works. Though there is no punitive judgment for believers on account of their union with Christ, there will be an accounting of the deeds done by believers, resulting in the distribution of rewards in accord with their faithful labors. These rewards are to be considered in addition to the eternal life they have already received through faith in Christ alone. In other words, people receive salvation only through faith in Christ and do not merit eternal life, but God gives additional rewards that differ from person to person depending on the individual’s obedience. This day and hour of judgement is unknown to mankind for the express purpose of encouraging God’s people to be watchful and prayerful (Matt. 24:36).
God created the world with the purpose of bringing all creation to a glorious consummation, at which time everything will be perfected and death will no longer be possible. In His eternal counsel, God determined that some angels and all mankind would fall into a state of depravity and evil and would therefore fall under the just sentence of His wrath and curse. Since angels and men are morally responsible and God is righteous, God must punish all unrighteousness. Of His mere good pleasure, God choose a people out of the mass of fallen humanity whom He would redeem by the death and resurrection of Christ (Eph. 1:4; 2 Thess. 2:13). He has appointed a day in which He will render judgement to each person by Christ (Acts 17:31). Judgment day is, in Scripture, revealed to be a day of final salvation and damnation.
Both the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament Apostles spoke of judgment day as “the day of the Lord.” In the Old Testament, the “day of the Lord” was often a period of judgment that Israel would suffer at the hands of their enemies. In the prophets, the day of the Lord is also shorthand for “the eschatological [final] day of judgment and salvation.” The judgments and restoration of old covenant Israel served as types of the ultimate promised judgment and salvation. When Jesus came in the flesh, He took the judgment of His people upon Himself on the cross in order to save them from their sin and the wrath of God. On judgment day, God will welcome His people into their everlasting rest (Heb. 4). Nevertheless, judgment day will also be a day when God executes the full extent of His judgment on the ungodly.
The final judgment will include God’s just condemnation of fallen angels and unregenerate men and women. The Westminster Confession of Faith states:
God hath appointed a day, wherein he will judge the world, in righteousness, by Jesus Christ, to whom all power and judgment is given of the Father. In which day, not only the apostate angels shall be judged, but likewise all persons that have lived upon earth shall appear before the tribunal of Christ, to give an account of their thoughts, words, and deeds; and to receive according to what they have done in the body, whether good or evil. (33.1)
The prophets, Jesus, and the Apostles all speak of the eternal torment that the wicked and unregenerate will experience when they are sent away from the presence of God and into eternal perdition on judgment day (Isa. 66:22–24; Dan. 12:2; Matt. 18:6–9; Matt. 25:31–46; 1 Thess. 5:1–10; Jude 7, 13). The biblical revelation of a day of judgment on which God will bring just punishment on the wicked runs counter to the commonly held idea that everyone goes to a better place when they die. Dr. Sproul rightly denounced this rejection of a final judgment and its functional belief in “justification by death.”
In John 5:24, Jesus makes it abundantly clear that there is will be no condemnatory judgment for those who are savingly united to Him. He said: “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). The Savior could make this declaration in light of the prospective work He would accomplish on the cross. Jesus took the judgment of God in the place of His people when He hung on the tree. The sacrifice of Jesus satisfied divine justice and propitiated the wrath of God for the elect. The substitutionary sacrifice of Christ served as a sufficient and final atonement for the sins of God’s people.
While Scripture emphasizes the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice to remove the wrath of God from believers on judgment day, it also reveals that there will be a general accounting of the things done in the body. This is commonly associated with the doctrine of future rewards. While there is no punitive action of God toward those for whom Jesus has died, there will be differing degrees of reward in the hereafter in accord with the degree of the faithfulness of ministers and believers (1 Cor. 3:14; 2 Cor. 5:10).
Scripture teaches that the coming of Christ and the final judgment will occur at an undisclosed time. First Thessalonians 5:2 reveals that Christ will come “like a thief in the night.” Jesus Himself taught that “concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matt. 24:36). In His incarnate state, the Son in His humanity subjected Himself to the revelation of God in Scripture. Therefore, according to His human nature, He lacked knowledge of the time of His return even though He possessed this knowledge according to His divine nature. The purpose of the unexpected and unknown timing of Jesus’ coming is summed up well in the Westminster Confession of Faith:
As Christ would have us to be certainly persuaded that there shall be a day of judgment, both to deter all men from sin; and for the greater consolation of the godly in their adversity: so will he have that day unknown to men, that they may shake off all carnal security, and be always watchful, because they know not at what hour the Lord will come; and may be ever prepared to say, Come Lord Jesus, come quickly, Amen. (33.3)
The proper response of believers to the biblical teaching about the coming of Christ and the final judgment is to be “watchful and prayerful,” seeking to live lives that are pleasing to the Lord so that we might not be ashamed before Him at His coming (1 John 2:28).
Each one of us will stand before God and will be held accountable for his or her sins—to the extent that even every idle word we speak will be brought into judgment. No one escapes the judgment of God. We all must stand before that final tribunal and be judged not on a curve, not according to how we stack up against other people in this world, but how we stand according to God’s standard of righteousness, a standard that none of us will ever reach.
The Bible speaks of two ways in which people die. There are those who die in faith and, because of that faith, are linked to the atoning work of Christ and receive the benefits of His atoning work, including entrance into His kingdom. The other way that the Bible speaks of dying is dying in sin. Those who die in sin are those who die in a state of impenitence. Such people have never bowed the knee to the living God and cried out from their helplessness for His grace. Instead of clinging to the cross and coming with nothing in our hands, it is our nature as fallen creatures to try to bring something in our hands that will pay the price that needs to be paid for our redemption. This is the height or, perhaps, the nadir of folly. The only thing we can be sure of is that death will give us judgment. The question is, do we have that faith by which we are linked to the righteousness of Christ and all the benefits of His ministry on our behalf, or will we stand alone at that judgment bar of Christ?
R.C. Sproul
Tabletalk magazine
